Engine blocks and cylinder heads for internal combustion engines are most generally manufactured by casting them from metal alloys. The castings of the engine blocks and cylinder heads must provide for cavities or passageways for coolant, oil, air intake and exhaust, and valve seats. To provide effective cooling of the block and cylinder head, the passageways for the coolant must be interlaced with the oil passages, air intake and exhaust, and the valve seats. These cavities are formed by core elements within the mold that can be removed when the casting metal solidifies.
Core elements can be formed as a single unit or as an assembly of several separate core elements. The core element, or separate core elements, are formed by filling a core box with core sand and a chemical-curing resin. The core box is essentially a mold that forces the sand and resin into the desired shape. After the core has been formed, the core is injected with gas catalyst. After the core element has been cured, it is coated with a refractory wash and sent through an oven for curing. Upon curing of the refractory wash, the core element is ready for use in casting the engine block or cylinder head.
The heart of a quality cylinder head is the casting core assembly. Most of the cost factors and quality issues are dictated by the performance of the casting core. Thus, it is essential that the casting core be handled, stored, and monitored in a fashion that ensures the highest quality standard. Typically, this entails retaining the casting core in the "engine position", that is, with the combustion chamber face oriented downwardly.
While the "engine position" is preferred for handling, storing, and inspecting the casting core, the casting design and process variables sometimes dictate that the cylinder head be cast with the combustion chamber face in the cope, that is, inverted from the "engine position". In the past, when the core element was ready to be inverted for placement in the drag, a foundry worker manually lifted and inverted it so as to orient the combustion chamber face in the cope. For smaller core elements, this has not posed a great difficulty. However, as core elements get heavier, as they do with larger engines, manually inverting a casting core can quickly tax human capabilities and lead to handling errors that result in bad parts. Accordingly, a mechanism and method for reliably lifting, inverting and placing heavy casting cores will make a significant contribution to the manufacture of internal combustion engines and their production In addition, a machine capable of repetitively and accurately lifting, inverting and placing a plurality of casting cores so as to avoid damage to the casting cores while keeping pace with production schedules is particularly needed by engine and cylinder head manufacturers.